Google News reports two links right now as News for “Mohammed al-Ajami COP18”: Democracy Now (by mistake, evidently) and Limes (in Italian – the only news outlet capable of mentioning in the same article the two Big Things happening in Qatar right now ).

BUT WAIT!

Actually, no protest has taken place in Doha. From Karl Ritter on the Huffington Post (where the video of the rally has not been made available to all):

Khalid al-Mohannadi, one of the organizers, noted that “it’s not a protest, it’s a march for peace.”

That was Mr al-Mohannadi, from today on known as Abu Deek Rumi. (note to Qatari censors: that was a joke).

Anyway…the people-formerly-known-as-protesters marching now for peace. Why not. One can only assume sarcasm, and also in Ritter’s description of the demonstrators as a “well-behaved crowd“. In fact, the suspicion (of a veil of journalistic irony) arises when one looks at the actual crowd, reported as “a few hundred people” (video available to all at Brisbane Times).

The fact that sympathetic journalists can only talk of a very limited number of protesters peace marchers means there were even fewer people than a few hundred. From the video, an estimate varies between 60 and 150 perhaps (addendum: this is because every shot of the demonstration covers one or two seconds at most, exactly what happens when the crowd is very small). Plus a guy dressed in local attire (Mr Rumi, I presume?).

The metallic, prefabricated female voice on Brisbane Times makes perfect sense in that context.

Not much for Climate Justice, uh? If that’s what happens to it, with its own proponents putting it more or less aside not to displease or agitate the hosts, then really there is no such a thing as Climate Justice.

If I were an inhabitant of the Northern regions of the Sakha Republic, I would be mightily disappointed by that…